Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / IRS Agents Target the Middle Class, Radical Bias at NPR Exposed & Schumer's Plan to Nuke the Constitution Week In Review

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IRS Agents Target the Middle Class, Radical Bias at NPR Exposed & Schumer's Plan to Nuke the Constitution Week In Review · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review. Ben
0:03
Speaker 1: Ferguson with you, and these are the big stories that
0:05
Speaker 1: you may have missed that we talked about this past week.
0:08
Speaker 1: First up, the IRS is targeting now millions of middle
0:12
Speaker 1: class Americans, something they promised that they weren't going to
0:16
Speaker 1: do when it came to the Biden administration. We'll expose
0:20
Speaker 1: why you may be a target. Coming up in a moment. Also,
0:23
Speaker 1: a whistleblower inside of NPR comes forward after decades of
0:27
Speaker 1: working there, saying, now they're just out to destroy people
0:30
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump. They're no longer just kind of a
0:33
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit more liberal mentality in the office.
0:37
Speaker 1: It is about destroying conservatives. I want you to hear
0:40
Speaker 1: what he has to say. It's truly shocking. And finally,
0:43
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer is confident that the Myiarci's impeachment will be
0:47
Speaker 1: resolved in a single day. Will Republicans actually fight back?
0:51
Speaker 1: We'll explain that battle heating up. It is the Weekend Review,
0:55
Speaker 1: and it starts right now. Senator, Let's talk about this
0:59
Speaker 1: shocking data that's come out, a warning that came from
1:03
Speaker 1: you on this show, and I want to play that
1:05
Speaker 1: in a moment. But I want to get to the
1:07
Speaker 1: headline here. There are two things right now that are
1:10
Speaker 1: worrying many Americans. Number one, it's Bidenomics. It is a
1:14
Speaker 1: disaster right now. We are seeing even top Biden economic
1:18
Speaker 1: advisor bragged about gas prices which are up fifty percent
1:23
Speaker 1: since Biden took office, saying, quote, we are pleased that
1:26
Speaker 1: gas prices have come down. Now the media is allowing
1:29
Speaker 1: them to lie, and the American people are not going
1:32
Speaker 1: to fall for this. I don't believe. But take a
1:34
Speaker 1: listen to this. This is coming from the White House,
1:36
Speaker 1: from the Biden team trying to convince Americans that hey,
1:40
Speaker 1: you're paying less of the pump right now than ever.
1:42
Speaker 1: You should be excited.
1:44
Speaker 2: Oh important for American families and a big focus of
1:49
Speaker 2: President Biden. We are pleased that gas prices have come
1:52
Speaker 2: down by a dollar forty relative to that peak that
1:57
Speaker 2: was caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But as you say,
2:01
Speaker 2: we are watching carefully to make sure that those gas
2:05
Speaker 2: prices that the pump don't go up to.
2:08
Speaker 1: Now, Senator, that's just a lie that gas prices are
2:12
Speaker 1: not down. Anyone that goes the pump knows this. We
2:15
Speaker 1: also know now that grocery prices are nearing forty percent
2:18
Speaker 1: higher than they were in twenty nineteen. And to add
2:22
Speaker 1: insult to injury, we're now being told, on top of
2:25
Speaker 1: all of that that's hurting the middle class, there's now
2:28
Speaker 1: going to be more than ever IRS agents that are
2:31
Speaker 1: targeting specifically middle class Americans, with more audits than ever before.
2:38
Speaker 3: Well, that's exactly right. First of all, in terms of prices,
2:41
Speaker 3: you know, they're crowing about that. They say gasoline prices
2:45
Speaker 3: are lower than the worse they were under Biden, but
2:49
Speaker 3: they're still up fifty one percent from where they were
2:51
Speaker 3: under Trump. By the way, overall prices are up eighteen
2:55
Speaker 3: point six percent. Real average weekly earnings are down four
2:59
Speaker 3: point two per real average weekly warnings earnings were up
3:03
Speaker 3: eight point two percent under Trump. And in the month
3:05
Speaker 3: of March zero new manufacturing jobs were added. And so look,
3:10
Speaker 3: the economy is hurting mightily. And then you put on
3:13
Speaker 3: top of that the IRS is doing actually what we
3:17
Speaker 3: predicted on on this podcast is targeting the middle class.
3:21
Speaker 3: The Wall Street Journal wrote that wrote just a few
3:25
Speaker 3: days ago quote, the Internal Revenue Service got an audit
3:28
Speaker 3: of its own in time for tax Day and two
3:30
Speaker 3: irregularities jump out. President Biden's plan to hire a new
3:34
Speaker 3: army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents
3:38
Speaker 3: already at work are targeting the middle class. Those are
3:42
Speaker 3: the two findings of the IRS's watchdog, the Treasury Inspector
3:45
Speaker 3: General for Tax Administration. The most recent data suggests the
3:50
Speaker 3: IRS is still focused on the middle class. As of
3:54
Speaker 3: last summer, sixty three percent of new audits target to
4:00
Speaker 3: taxpayers with incomes of less than two hundred thousand dollars.
4:06
Speaker 3: Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners,
4:10
Speaker 3: while eighty percent of the audits covered filers earning less
4:14
Speaker 3: than one million dollars. And as the Wall Street Journal urge,
4:18
Speaker 3: as you don't forget to save those charitable giving receipts.
4:22
Speaker 3: This is exactly opposite what Joe Biden promised the American people.
4:28
Speaker 3: But it's what we knew was going to happen. They
4:30
Speaker 3: were going to use the new agents to go after
4:33
Speaker 3: the middle class. That's exactly what they're doing.
4:36
Speaker 1: Let me just remind people of what you said on
4:37
Speaker 1: the show, and this was quite some time ago. Here
4:40
Speaker 1: is the warning when we said it here early on
4:43
Speaker 1: that they're going to come after average Americans, not just
4:45
Speaker 1: the elites, as they were claiming.
4:47
Speaker 3: For Good Friday in Easter, the IRS released the news
4:50
Speaker 3: they dated as a news dump going into the holiday
4:53
Speaker 3: because they didn't want people to pay attention to it
4:56
Speaker 3: that they are right now hiring the first thirty fives
5:00
Speaker 3: of those employees. Ten thousand of them are being hired
5:03
Speaker 3: in the current fiscal year, and in fiscal year twenty
5:07
Speaker 3: twenty four they're planning to double that with twenty seven
5:10
Speaker 3: thousand new hires. Now, now what does that mean. Well,
5:15
Speaker 3: let's go through a lot of different elements. The long
5:18
Speaker 3: and short of it is, it means a whole bunch
5:21
Speaker 3: more IRS employees there to harass you, to harass citizens,
5:25
Speaker 3: to rass small businesses, to harass and target the political
5:28
Speaker 3: enemies of the Biden White House.
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Speaker 1: But Senator, you look at that warning, and you look
5:35
Speaker 1: at what you mentioned right beforehand about prices that have skyrocketed,
5:39
Speaker 1: the costs of goods and services are up, manufacturing jobs
5:42
Speaker 1: that are down, and there has to be a moment,
5:46
Speaker 1: I would argue of reckoning with the average American voter
5:49
Speaker 1: where they look at this administration and they sit there
5:52
Speaker 1: and they stare at you in the face. They say, no, no,
5:54
Speaker 1: gas prices are good, and the American people have to
5:57
Speaker 1: know no, that's not true. When they say, oh no, no,
5:59
Speaker 1: the price of the grocery store, they're not that bad.
6:01
Speaker 1: They've got to have a moment where they say, no, no,
6:04
Speaker 1: we don't believe you anymore. You travel a lot, you
6:08
Speaker 1: talk to a lot of people on the state of Texas.
6:10
Speaker 1: I don't believe that the American people are going to
6:13
Speaker 1: be bamboozled by this much longer.
6:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:15
Speaker 3: Look, I think the American people know that the Bidenomics
6:18
Speaker 3: is a mess. And in fact, you see the Biden
6:21
Speaker 3: White House backing away from using that term Bidenomics because
6:25
Speaker 3: they thought it was a good thing and they discovered,
6:28
Speaker 3: oh wait, people think it's a terrible thing. That's it. Listen,
6:32
Speaker 3: anyone who's paying the bills, anyone who goes to the
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Speaker 3: grocery store, anyone who fills up their tank at the pump,
6:38
Speaker 3: anyone who deals with health care cost, electricity costs, rent, mortgages.
6:44
Speaker 3: I'll tell you, young people, I think one of the
6:47
Speaker 3: most potent things is young people buying their first home,
6:52
Speaker 3: a young married couple. They're suddenly discovering they can get
6:54
Speaker 3: about half as much house as they thought they could get,
6:58
Speaker 3: because a few years ago, when you had mortgage rates
7:01
Speaker 3: two and a half percent, you could get actually a
7:03
Speaker 3: pretty big, pretty, you know, a nice three bedroom house,
7:06
Speaker 3: a backyard, a swing And suddenly young people are discovering,
7:10
Speaker 3: holy cow, what I thought I could afford is now
7:14
Speaker 3: out of reach.
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Speaker 1: Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation,
7:18
Speaker 1: you can go back and listen to the full podcast
7:20
Speaker 1: from earlier this week. Now onto story number two, Senator,
7:25
Speaker 1: there was another story that broke, and this is one
7:28
Speaker 1: that is for a guy that has spent my entire
7:32
Speaker 1: career in media, NPR annoys me beyond a level of
7:37
Speaker 1: frustration that most people can imagine, because I don't understand
7:41
Speaker 1: why my tax dollars are subsidizing a hardcore leftist organization
7:46
Speaker 1: and why I'm paying their salaries at NPR. That's the reality.
7:51
Speaker 1: But now we've got a guy that was there for
7:52
Speaker 1: twenty five years who has blown the whistle on NPR
7:56
Speaker 1: saying that basically, when Donald Trump was elected, it completely BROKENPR.
8:01
Speaker 1: And they are there every day to take down conservatives,
8:04
Speaker 1: takedown Trump, take down anybody like him, and our tax
8:08
Speaker 1: dollars are going to pay for MPR.
8:10
Speaker 3: No, that's exactly right. And this story is a big
8:13
Speaker 3: deal because this is, as you noted, a whistleblower who
8:19
Speaker 3: came clean and really wanted to describe what was happening
8:22
Speaker 3: in a major media institution, one of the most important
8:24
Speaker 3: media institutions in the country. And so the individual in
8:28
Speaker 3: question is a guy named Uri Berliner, who was a
8:31
Speaker 3: twenty five year veteran of NPR. He was a senior
8:34
Speaker 3: business editor editor at NPR, and he wrote a column
8:39
Speaker 3: on the Free Press that came out April ninth, and
8:42
Speaker 3: I actually want to read from a good chunk of
8:44
Speaker 3: it because I think it it's important what he said,
8:47
Speaker 3: and it is very much whistleblowing. So here's how he starts. Quote.
8:53
Speaker 3: You know, the stereotype of the NPR listener an ev driving,
8:57
Speaker 3: wordle playing toe, back bag care carrying, coastal elite. It
9:02
Speaker 3: doesn't precisely describe me, but it's not far off. I'm
9:06
Speaker 3: Sarah Lawrence, educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother.
9:12
Speaker 3: I drive a Subaru and Spotify says my listening habits
9:15
Speaker 3: are most similar to people in Berkeley. I fit the
9:19
Speaker 3: NPR mold I'll cop to that. So when I got
9:22
Speaker 3: a job there twenty five years ago, I never looked back.
9:25
Speaker 3: As a senior editor on the business desk, where news
9:27
Speaker 3: is always breaking, we've covered upheevils in the workplace, super
9:30
Speaker 3: market prices, social media, and AI. It's true that NPR
9:34
Speaker 3: always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
9:37
Speaker 3: tenure here, an open minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
9:44
Speaker 3: but not knee jerk activist or scolding. In recent years, however,
9:49
Speaker 3: that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or
9:52
Speaker 3: read its coverage online find something different, the distilled worldview
9:56
Speaker 3: of a very small segment of the US population. If
10:00
Speaker 3: you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh,
10:04
Speaker 3: it's always been this way, But it hasn't. For decades.
10:09
Speaker 3: Since its founding in nineteen seventy, a wide swath of
10:13
Speaker 3: America tuned into NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio
10:17
Speaker 3: pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to
10:21
Speaker 3: us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the
10:24
Speaker 3: country the world radically different from our own, engaging precisely
10:28
Speaker 3: because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more
10:33
Speaker 3: pride within an NPR than the farmer listening to morning
10:36
Speaker 3: edition from his or her tractor at sunrise. Back in
10:40
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left,
10:44
Speaker 3: it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty
10:48
Speaker 3: six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three
10:53
Speaker 3: percent as middle of the road, and thirty seven percent
10:56
Speaker 3: as liberal. By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different.
11:01
Speaker 3: Only eleven percent described themselves as very or even somewhat conservative,
11:07
Speaker 3: twenty one percent is middle of the road, and sixty
11:10
Speaker 3: seven percent of listeners said that were very or somewhat liberal.
11:13
Speaker 3: We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates
11:17
Speaker 3: and traditional liberals. An open minded spirit no longer exists
11:22
Speaker 3: with n NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an
11:25
Speaker 3: audience that reflects America. That wouldn't be a problem for
11:29
Speaker 3: an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience, but
11:34
Speaker 3: for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating
11:39
Speaker 3: both for its journalism and its business model.
11:42
Speaker 1: You listen to that, and it's a guy that's almost
11:45
Speaker 1: like he's coming clean, realizing just how damaging what NPR
11:51
Speaker 1: is doing to the country, and he's in paving it. Yeah,
11:55
Speaker 1: he's in pain. He also did an interview he set
11:58
Speaker 1: down talking about this, and I want you to hear
12:01
Speaker 1: what he had to say on honestly with BARRII Rice.
12:04
Speaker 3: Take a listen to this.
12:05
Speaker 4: Everyone knew that NPR had a liberal bent. It was
12:08
Speaker 4: like saying these days, like Fox has a conservative bent.
12:11
Speaker 4: That was obvious to anyone. But you argue that it's
12:14
Speaker 4: really gone from having a liberal bent or a liberal
12:17
Speaker 4: shading to really a bias. Here's one thing you write
12:20
Speaker 4: in your essay. You write, for the majority of your
12:23
Speaker 4: time at NPR, despite the liberal bend, an open minded,
12:26
Speaker 4: curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee jerk
12:31
Speaker 4: activists or scolding or when did that start to change?
12:35
Speaker 4: When did the thing that everyone sort of recognized as
12:39
Speaker 4: sort of a liberal bias start to shift into something
12:42
Speaker 4: harder than that, into what you call a knee jerk
12:46
Speaker 4: activist and even scolding quality.
12:49
Speaker 5: Well, I think it was a cumulative I don't think
12:51
Speaker 5: it was one event. I mean, I think part of
12:54
Speaker 5: it was Trump's election. You know, I think like every newsroom,
12:58
Speaker 5: every legacy medium is when we were shocked, disturbed, distraught,
13:02
Speaker 5: really troubled. We assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win
13:06
Speaker 5: and and she didn't, and it was really an unsettling experience.
13:13
Speaker 5: But I also think to me it revealed that we
13:15
Speaker 5: didn't really understand a lot of what was going on
13:17
Speaker 5: in America, that we were out of touch. But I
13:22
Speaker 5: think also we we kind of locked down after a while.
13:26
Speaker 5: I think after a while we started covering Trump in
13:31
Speaker 5: a way that, like a lot of the legacy news
13:34
Speaker 5: news organization, that we were trying to damage his presidency
13:37
Speaker 5: to even it's flying, anything we could to harm him.
13:40
Speaker 5: And I think what we latched onto was Russia collusion,
13:43
Speaker 5: like a lot of news organizations, which was, as I write,
13:46
Speaker 5: sort of catnip, although it was just rumors and a
13:50
Speaker 5: lot of it based on pretty shoddy documents. Evidence there was,
13:57
Speaker 5: it wasn't really solid, but I think it was it
14:00
Speaker 5: was compelling and for us, you know, I think a
14:03
Speaker 5: lot of newspapers you know, used documents or anonymous sources.
14:08
Speaker 5: We really latched onto Adam Schiff. He was like our
14:11
Speaker 5: mused to the Trump collusion story. We had him on
14:14
Speaker 5: constantly a lot. I think I counted twenty five times,
14:17
Speaker 5: you know, and in most of those conversations he sort
14:19
Speaker 5: of alluded to evidence he may have had or sort
14:22
Speaker 5: of teased out, yeah, Russia, you know, he was coluding
14:25
Speaker 5: or the campaign was colluding with Russia. And then the
14:27
Speaker 5: Muller report came out and no collusion, and you know,
14:32
Speaker 5: I think we sort of just sort of the story
14:35
Speaker 5: kind of disappeared. But to me that was like a
14:37
Speaker 5: time for like, what went wrong? Why did we miss this? Like,
14:41
Speaker 5: you know, despite our feelings about Trump, this is a
14:43
Speaker 5: story we should have sort of treated differently.
14:46
Speaker 1: You hear him say that they he said they were
14:49
Speaker 1: trying to harm Trump. Now that is shocking for him
14:53
Speaker 1: to say this because in translation center that means.
14:56
Speaker 3: And stop, stop and repeat that for a second. Stop
14:58
Speaker 3: and stop and repeat that first second. This is a
15:01
Speaker 3: senior editor at NPR. Mind you, they're finding funded by
15:05
Speaker 3: US taxpayer dollars, and he is admitting the entire institution
15:10
Speaker 3: and his words, was trying to harm Trump. I mean,
15:15
Speaker 3: that is a damning admission. And at some level, as
15:20
Speaker 3: he noted in what I read a minute ago, it
15:22
Speaker 3: was obvious to any conservative, But it says something for
15:25
Speaker 3: a senior editor to go and blow the whistle like this.
15:30
Speaker 1: This NPR reminds me of Twitter before Elon Musk bought
15:33
Speaker 1: it in many ways, where it's bloated, it's out of control,
15:38
Speaker 1: it's activism. It's not run like a business because it's
15:42
Speaker 1: subsidized by government taxpayers. I'm fine with NPR existing center.
15:47
Speaker 1: They should figure out how to do it the same
15:48
Speaker 1: way that everybody else does in media, which is to
15:51
Speaker 1: you know, make money instead of us giving them our
15:55
Speaker 1: tax dollars to them, as he described it, try to
15:58
Speaker 1: hurt Trump every time they could. And it won't just
16:01
Speaker 1: be Trump in the future. It will be any other
16:04
Speaker 1: conservative based on what he's saying. It's not like they
16:07
Speaker 1: just went in against Trump and that was it. They're
16:09
Speaker 1: going in against every conservative on every story out there.
16:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me focus on two other segments of what
16:16
Speaker 3: Uriberliner wrote. Quote, Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity.
16:23
Speaker 3: I looked at voter registration for our newsroom in DC,
16:28
Speaker 3: where nprs headquartered and many of us live. I found
16:32
Speaker 3: eighty seven registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
16:44
Speaker 3: Now that's not vague or ambiguous, that's not equivocal, that
16:49
Speaker 3: is explicit let me read this other segment quote. In
16:54
Speaker 3: October twenty twenty, the New York Post published the explosive
16:57
Speaker 3: report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware
17:01
Speaker 3: computer shop containing emails about his sordid business deals. With
17:06
Speaker 3: the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye.
17:11
Speaker 3: Here's how NPR's managing editor for News at the time
17:15
Speaker 3: explained the thinking quote, we don't want to waste our
17:18
Speaker 3: time on stories that are not really stories, and we
17:21
Speaker 3: don't want to waste our listeners and readers' times on
17:24
Speaker 3: stories that are just pure distractions. But it wasn't a
17:28
Speaker 3: pure distraction or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens
17:34
Speaker 3: of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did
17:39
Speaker 3: belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to
17:45
Speaker 3: the corrupt world of multimillion dollar influence peddling and its
17:49
Speaker 3: possible implications for his father. The laptop was newsworthy, but
17:56
Speaker 3: the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead
18:01
Speaker 3: was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened
18:06
Speaker 3: as one of NPR's best and most fair minded journalists
18:10
Speaker 3: said it was good. We weren't following the laptop story
18:15
Speaker 3: because it could help Trump. When the essential facts of
18:20
Speaker 3: the Post reportings were confirmed and the emails verified independently
18:28
Speaker 3: about a year and a half later, we could have
18:30
Speaker 3: fessed up to our misjudgment, But like Russia collusion, we
18:36
Speaker 3: didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
18:41
Speaker 1: Why fix it? If it's your ideology, right, If this
18:44
Speaker 1: is what the ideology is, and it's being funded by taxpayers,
18:48
Speaker 1: why stop? Which brings me to my final question on this.
18:53
Speaker 1: I've heard about this, and we've talked about this for
18:55
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, twenty years. How on earth
18:58
Speaker 1: are they getting this type of government fund especially now
19:01
Speaker 1: if we know this from someone that worked there for
19:03
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Is there any way to say the
19:06
Speaker 1: NPR that's fine. If this is what your mission is,
19:08
Speaker 1: go and do it, but you're not going to do
19:10
Speaker 1: it subsidized by taxpayers.
19:13
Speaker 3: Listen. I would eliminate the funding for NPR tomorrow. That's
19:17
Speaker 3: the right thing to do. We shouldn't be in the
19:19
Speaker 3: business of funding NPR. The problem is every Democrat wants
19:24
Speaker 3: to spend your taxpayer dollars funding NPR, because why wouldn't
19:27
Speaker 3: you if you're a leftist, Why wouldn't you be willing
19:30
Speaker 3: to use taxpayer dollars to fund a propaganda outlet for
19:34
Speaker 3: your view? And I got to tell you in the
19:36
Speaker 3: budget battles, too many Republicans are scared of taking on NPR,
19:41
Speaker 3: and so between the two it keeps going. Look, I
19:44
Speaker 3: actually think it speaks volume that where Uri Berliner wrote
19:50
Speaker 3: this was the free Press. The free press was started
19:53
Speaker 3: by Barry Weiss. Berry Weiss resigned from the editorial board
19:57
Speaker 3: of The New York Times and wrote a letter. If
20:00
Speaker 3: you haven't read the letter, we may do a podcast
20:02
Speaker 3: where we just read the letter because it's something I
20:05
Speaker 3: actually think should be taught in every journalism class in America.
20:08
Speaker 3: It is a letter where and listen, Bury, by our
20:11
Speaker 3: own description, is left of center. She's a liberal Democrat
20:14
Speaker 3: or voter for Obama twice, but she was horrified. And
20:18
Speaker 3: actually Barry's resignation letter reads very much like Urie Berliner's article.
20:24
Speaker 3: They're both people left of center who actually believe in
20:27
Speaker 3: some modicum of free speech, some modicum of fairness, and
20:31
Speaker 3: they look at the corruption of institutions they respected. I
20:35
Speaker 3: look at Uri Berlinner and I'm reminded of John F.
20:38
Speaker 3: Kennedy's famous speech at the Berlin wall Ick ben I
20:41
Speaker 3: and Berliner, which he thought meant that he was a Berliner,
20:47
Speaker 3: a resident of Berlin, but actually it was poorly translated German.
20:52
Speaker 3: And what the better translation was is I am a
20:54
Speaker 3: jelly donut, which which was not JFK's finest moment, But
20:59
Speaker 3: nonetheless I feel the same sentiments. Aurie Berlinner and I
21:03
Speaker 3: may disagree on a lot of things, but I'm proud
21:05
Speaker 3: to stand with Arieberlinner for daring to speak the truth
21:09
Speaker 3: because free speech matters, and I actually think it matters.
21:13
Speaker 3: I met recently with the CEO of a major journalistic
21:18
Speaker 3: enterprise I won't say who it is, and I told him,
21:21
Speaker 3: I said, listen, I actually believe in a free press.
21:25
Speaker 3: I defend you even when you kick the crap out
21:27
Speaker 3: of me, even when you attack me, because I think
21:29
Speaker 3: it's important to democracy and free speech to have a
21:32
Speaker 3: real and vibrant press. But when you guys are just
21:36
Speaker 3: corrupt ideologues, when you're just propagandists, it hurts the entire country.
21:42
Speaker 3: And so I give a big shout out to Arib Berlinner.
21:45
Speaker 3: Like Barry Weiss, on whose platform he wrote this there
21:49
Speaker 3: are a handful of liberals, and I actually want to
21:51
Speaker 3: call out listen. I don't know that many fair minded
21:56
Speaker 3: liberals in the media listen to Verdict, although we're close
21:59
Speaker 3: to a million listeners, maybe there are. If you're a
22:02
Speaker 3: fair minded liberal working in the media and you don't
22:05
Speaker 3: like the bias and propagan and I'm not saying you're
22:08
Speaker 3: suddenly conservative and a right winger, that's okay, that's okay.
22:11
Speaker 3: We can have reasonable discussions, but when people speak out
22:17
Speaker 3: like Urie Berliner and Barry Wise, it makes a difference,
22:20
Speaker 3: and we need more people to do that.
22:22
Speaker 1: As before, if you want to hear the rest of
22:24
Speaker 1: this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
22:27
Speaker 1: dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the
22:29
Speaker 1: entire thing. I want to get back to the big
22:33
Speaker 1: story number three of the week you may have missed. Senator.
22:37
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the confidence of Chuck Schumer. In that
22:40
Speaker 1: clip that we played, he seemed pretty confident and set
22:44
Speaker 1: it over again. I think twice that this is going
22:47
Speaker 1: to be something we're looking for a resolution quickly, maybe
22:50
Speaker 1: in a day. As the reporter you go back at him.
22:53
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to push back on that at all.
22:55
Speaker 1: So what is their game plan to basically make all
22:59
Speaker 1: this go way? And how do we stop it? And
23:02
Speaker 1: that seems to be your core goal here is to
23:04
Speaker 1: make sure that doesn't happen.
23:07
Speaker 3: Schumer wants it incredibly quick, incredibly silent. He doesn't want
23:10
Speaker 3: Senate Democrats on record, he doesn't want any of the
23:13
Speaker 3: facts revealed to the American people. So originally the plan
23:17
Speaker 3: was that the House had announced they were going to
23:19
Speaker 3: transmit the articles of impeachment Wednesday night. You and I
23:22
Speaker 3: are recording this right now. It is eleven fifty one
23:25
Speaker 3: pm Tuesday night. The plan from the House was it
23:29
Speaker 3: was going to come over Wednesday night. Now, the consequence
23:32
Speaker 3: of that means that the Senate would have convened as
23:37
Speaker 3: an impeachment trial Thursday at one pm. So when articles
23:42
Speaker 3: of impeachment come to the Senate, there's actually a separate
23:44
Speaker 3: set of rules for impeachment. They're totally different from the
23:47
Speaker 3: legislative rules, and it's mandatory that the Senate immediately moves
23:51
Speaker 3: into impeachment when articles of impeachment come over. Look, it's
23:53
Speaker 3: only come over twenty one times in our whole nation's history.
23:56
Speaker 3: It is an unusual moment problem with the Senate starting
24:03
Speaker 3: this Thursday at one pm is typically senators go home
24:08
Speaker 3: Thursday afternoon, get on a plane, and fly back.
24:10
Speaker 4: To their states.
24:11
Speaker 3: Schumer wanted to do all of this Thursday afternoon because
24:14
Speaker 3: he knew senators would be anxious to leave to get
24:16
Speaker 3: back to their states. They have events scheduled in their state,
24:18
Speaker 3: they're traveling around their state, and he knew they would
24:21
Speaker 3: want to get out of here. So this morning, Tuesday morning,
24:24
Speaker 3: I started the morning by sitting down in a meeting
24:27
Speaker 3: with Mitch McConnell and with Republican leadership and with Mike
24:31
Speaker 3: Lee and John Kennedy, and meeting with leadership about how
24:38
Speaker 3: we can fight what Schumer is doing here. And a
24:41
Speaker 3: point that I raised in that meeting this morning, I said,
24:44
Speaker 3: it is really damn stupid for us to do this
24:48
Speaker 3: Thursday afternoon. It facilitates Schumer's goal of making this quick.
24:53
Speaker 3: And what I suggested at the meeting this morning is
24:56
Speaker 3: I said it would make a lot more sense for
24:59
Speaker 3: the House to transmit the articles of impeachment next week,
25:01
Speaker 3: next Monday. If they transmit it Monday, the Senate takes
25:05
Speaker 3: it up Tuesday. Tuesday is a much better time to
25:08
Speaker 3: take it up, because it means the Senate we have
25:10
Speaker 3: the entire week to put this issue before the American people,
25:13
Speaker 3: and we're not doing it at a time when senators
25:16
Speaker 3: both Democrats and Republicans are eager to get out of town.
25:19
Speaker 3: The phrase is jet fumes are in the air like
25:22
Speaker 3: Thursday afternoon is when leadership tries to ram things through
25:25
Speaker 3: quickly because everyone wants to leave.
25:27
Speaker 1: Well, and by the way side, note what's happening also
25:30
Speaker 1: this weekend, which every person in America that we love
25:32
Speaker 1: sport is going to be paying attention to as well,
25:34
Speaker 1: that starts on Thursday the Master. So for Democrats to
25:38
Speaker 1: be even a better time to.
25:39
Speaker 3: Get on Thursday. So a bit of good news I
25:43
Speaker 3: raised this morning at the meeting. I said, this doesn't
25:46
Speaker 3: make any sense. Everyone who was meeting with us agreed,
25:50
Speaker 3: and so I texted the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
25:52
Speaker 3: Mike Lee texted the Speaker of the House. John Kennedy
25:56
Speaker 3: texted the Speaker of the House, and the Speaker, to
25:58
Speaker 3: his credit, he's a great guy, he's a great friend.
26:01
Speaker 2: Uh.
26:01
Speaker 3: The Speaker said, okay, great, happy to do it. And
26:04
Speaker 3: so he announced this afternoon that they were going to
26:07
Speaker 3: delay sending the articles of impeachment until early next week,
26:10
Speaker 3: and so we asked him to do that. He did
26:12
Speaker 3: that at our request, and the reason we wanted it
26:15
Speaker 3: to come early next week is so that we could
26:17
Speaker 3: focus early on the week when we could get real
26:19
Speaker 3: attention and focus on it. So that was a good step.
26:22
Speaker 3: Now I want to pause and have you reflect a
26:27
Speaker 3: little bit on why this motion to table is so
26:30
Speaker 3: consequential if Schumer succeeds, if every Democrat votes for it,
26:35
Speaker 3: and right now Schumer seems supremely confident that every Democrat
26:39
Speaker 3: will vote for it. What that means, number one, is
26:43
Speaker 3: that every Democrat is now on record supporting Joe Biden's
26:46
Speaker 3: open borders, that they're perfectly fine with what Alejandro Mayorcis
26:51
Speaker 3: has done. But number two, understand that they will have
26:54
Speaker 3: participated in changing the US Senate. And so so today
27:00
Speaker 3: I participated in a press conference with a number of
27:03
Speaker 3: Republican senators where we talked about the significance of this moment.
27:08
Speaker 3: And it is in many ways very similar to twenty
27:11
Speaker 3: thirteen and twenty thirteen Harry Reid, the Democrat, was the
27:15
Speaker 3: Senate majority leader, and it is when Harry Reid nuked
27:19
Speaker 3: the filibuster for judicial appointments and for cabinet appointments and
27:24
Speaker 3: nuking the filibuster, what that meant is is that Harry
27:27
Speaker 3: Reid broke the Senate rules in order to change the
27:29
Speaker 3: Senate rules. It used to be the case that you
27:31
Speaker 3: needed sixty votes to move forward on judges, to move
27:34
Speaker 3: forward on executive branch nominees. And what Harry Reid did
27:41
Speaker 3: is he used what was called the nuclear option, which
27:45
Speaker 3: is that he got a ruling from the Chair on
27:48
Speaker 3: the floor that it takes sixty votes to proceed to
27:51
Speaker 3: a nomination, and then he moved to overturn the ruling
27:56
Speaker 3: of the chair. Under the Senate rules, any ruling of
27:58
Speaker 3: the chair can be overturned. You can overturn the ruling
28:01
Speaker 3: of the Chair with just fifty one votes. And so
28:04
Speaker 3: what happened was Harry Reid got the Democrats to overturn
28:07
Speaker 3: the ruling of the chair. And once you do that,
28:09
Speaker 3: you change the precedence and that new ruling is binding.
28:14
Speaker 3: The effect of that is, since twenty thirteen, nominations have
28:18
Speaker 3: only required fifty one votes instead of sixty votes. Well,
28:23
Speaker 3: that night that Reid was nuking the filibuster for nominations.
28:29
Speaker 3: The filibuster still exists for legislation, but read nuked it
28:31
Speaker 3: for nominations. I talked to Amy Klobuchar on the Senate floor,
28:36
Speaker 3: and I told Amy that day, I said, you are
28:40
Speaker 3: going to regret this decision. All of the Democrats are
28:43
Speaker 3: going to regret this decision. And the consequence of this
28:47
Speaker 3: decision is we're going to see more justices like Antoninscalienne
28:51
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas on the courts. And there is an irony
28:55
Speaker 3: that the direct result of Harry Reid nuking the filibuster
29:00
Speaker 3: is Roe versus Wade being overturned. If Harry Reid had
29:03
Speaker 3: not nuked the filibuster, there's no way on earth that
29:07
Speaker 3: the Senate would have confirmed Brett Kavanaugh, or probably not
29:10
Speaker 3: Amy Coney Barrett, and maybe not even Neil Gorsuch that
29:13
Speaker 3: if we required sixty votes, Roe versus Wade would still
29:18
Speaker 3: be the law of the land. But for the Senate
29:21
Speaker 3: Democrats nuking the filibuster in twenty thirteen, and I told
29:24
Speaker 3: them that a number of us told them that in
29:27
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen. Now, what Chuck Schumer is planning to do
29:31
Speaker 3: next week is every bit as big a deal as
29:35
Speaker 3: nuking the filibuster, And in many ways it's more significant.
29:37
Speaker 3: Why because the filibuster is not asture.
29:41
Speaker 1: What does the cause and effect then?
29:42
Speaker 4: Right?
29:42
Speaker 1: If you're saying and you give the last example, which
29:45
Speaker 1: is significant, and I don't think many people understood that
29:49
Speaker 1: or remembered it, But what would it then be the
29:52
Speaker 1: cause and effect of this? And could there be a
29:55
Speaker 1: silver lining in it?
29:56
Speaker 3: Well, Look, the reason it is more significant is the
30:01
Speaker 3: filibuster is not written in the Constitution. The filibuster is
30:03
Speaker 3: a matter of Senate procedure and Senate practice, and the
30:06
Speaker 3: Senate rules impeachment is written into the Constitution. The obligation
30:12
Speaker 3: on the Senate to try impeachment is mandatory. It is
30:15
Speaker 3: in the Constitution. So what the Senate Democrats are planning
30:17
Speaker 3: to do next week is nuke the impeachment clause of
30:22
Speaker 3: the Constitution, destroy the Senate's responsibility, give away the Senate's power.
30:27
Speaker 3: And you want to know the consequences. Listen, We've got
30:30
Speaker 3: an election in November. I think there's a very good
30:32
Speaker 3: chance Donald Trump will be elected president. And it is
30:36
Speaker 3: entirely possible that Trump will be elected president. Republicans will
30:40
Speaker 3: take the Senate, and yet we could lose the House.
30:44
Speaker 3: We could end up in January with Trump and the
30:46
Speaker 3: White House, a Republican Senate and a Democrat House. If
30:51
Speaker 3: that happens, I'm here to predict right now. If the
30:53
Speaker 3: Democrats have the House, they will once again impeach Donald Trump,
30:57
Speaker 3: maybe for the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time.
30:59
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how many times a Democrat House
31:02
Speaker 3: will impeach Donald Trump. It may be the only thing
31:04
Speaker 3: they do for two years. If that happens and it
31:09
Speaker 3: comes to the Senate and we have a Republican Senate,
31:11
Speaker 3: you know what we'll do. We'll table the damn thing.
31:14
Speaker 3: And let's be clear, we didn't last time. So when
31:18
Speaker 3: Donald Trump was impeached the first time, it was exactly
31:21
Speaker 3: that scenario. You had a Democrat House. Pelosi ram the impeachment.
31:25
Speaker 3: Through the impeachment came over to the Senate, we had
31:28
Speaker 3: a Republican Senate. Mitch McConnell was the majority leader. We
31:32
Speaker 3: could have tried to do what Chuck Schumer is getting
31:35
Speaker 3: ready to do. We could have just tried to table
31:36
Speaker 3: at the outset, but we didn't because Senate Republicans actually
31:39
Speaker 3: took our constitutional obligation. Seriously, we followed the Constitution, we
31:43
Speaker 3: conducted the trial, and Donald Trump was acquitted. We voted
31:46
Speaker 3: not guilty. That's actually the proper constitutional way. What Chuck
31:51
Speaker 3: Schumer is willing to do to protect Democrat senators from
31:56
Speaker 3: accountability for the disaster at our southern border of their policies,
32:01
Speaker 3: what he now calls a policy dispute, is break the
32:04
Speaker 3: Senate and nuke the impeachment clause of the Constitution. That's
32:09
Speaker 3: a big deal, and it's a deal that will have
32:12
Speaker 3: consequences ten years, fifty years, one hundred years from now.
32:16
Speaker 3: If Schumer does this next week, you will never again
32:20
Speaker 3: see an impeachment trial when the Senate is the same
32:23
Speaker 3: party as the president. That will be taken off the table.
32:28
Speaker 1: So if he does this, will there be any backlash
32:31
Speaker 1: you think come November? Or is this such inside baseball
32:35
Speaker 1: that it just says they say, okay, so so what
32:39
Speaker 1: he changed it? Who really cares?
32:41
Speaker 3: Well, look, the institutional change of the Senate. I don't
32:45
Speaker 3: think that's going to be a big voting issue. I
32:48
Speaker 3: do think the border and the chaos and the suffering
32:53
Speaker 3: and the death that is coming from Joe Biden to
32:56
Speaker 3: the Democrats' open border. I think that is going to
32:58
Speaker 3: be probably the single most important issue in November, and
33:02
Speaker 3: so it is critically important we do everything we can
33:05
Speaker 3: to number One, increase the price for Schumer breaking the Senate,
33:11
Speaker 3: destroying the institutions of democracy. You know, there's an irony.
33:15
Speaker 3: Democrats love to beat their chest and talk about how
33:17
Speaker 3: they want to save democracy, and yet this is an
33:22
Speaker 3: assault on democracy. This is an assault on the constitution
33:26
Speaker 3: and the institution that is the Senate, just like the
33:29
Speaker 3: Democrats assault on the filibuster back in twenty thirteen. The
33:32
Speaker 3: Democrats have systematically been tearing down our institutions. But what
33:37
Speaker 3: I think is going to resonate. So listen, when we
33:40
Speaker 3: move to the impeachment trial, hopefully early next week, a
33:44
Speaker 3: number of us intend to raise points of order. I
33:46
Speaker 3: intend to raise probably multiple points of order, challenging what
33:51
Speaker 3: the Democrats are doing. And let me be clear what's
33:54
Speaker 3: supposed to happen. So here's what should happen next week.
33:57
Speaker 3: They're one of two things that can happen. Number One,
34:01
Speaker 3: the Senate, the full Senate could could move to could
34:06
Speaker 3: adopt an organizing resolution and move to holding an impeachment
34:10
Speaker 3: trial on the floor of the Senate. Now, when the
34:12
Speaker 3: president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States
34:16
Speaker 3: presides over the impeachment trial and it occurs on the
34:21
Speaker 3: floor of the Senate. You'll recall that's what happened with
34:24
Speaker 3: both the Trump's impeachments. That's what happened with Bill Clinton's impeachment.
34:29
Speaker 3: And so Mike Lee has filed an organizing resolution that
34:34
Speaker 3: I've co authored that would set up a trial using
34:38
Speaker 3: exactly the same rules that the Democrats put in place
34:41
Speaker 3: that we followed for Donald Trump's impeachment. Actually, the first
34:45
Speaker 3: one the Republicans put in place. The second one the
34:48
Speaker 3: Democrats had a majority, they put in place for Trump's
34:50
Speaker 3: second impeachment. And by the way, the second impeachment of Trump,
34:54
Speaker 3: the Chief Justice did not preside because Trump was no
34:56
Speaker 3: longer president. So Pat Leahy the president pro tem because
35:00
Speaker 3: the Chief Justice only presides when it is the sitting
35:03
Speaker 3: president who's being impeached. That's one way of proceeding. Frankly,
35:08
Speaker 3: if we had a Republican majority, that's the way we
35:10
Speaker 3: would proceed is we would have a trial on the
35:12
Speaker 3: floor of the Senate to put the facts before the
35:14
Speaker 3: American people. There is another way that Schumer and the
35:18
Speaker 3: Democrats could proceed consistent with the Constitution and consistent with
35:21
Speaker 3: the law, which is, the Senate could appoint an impeachment committee,
35:27
Speaker 3: a committee with an equal number of members, an equal
35:30
Speaker 3: number of Democrats and Republicans, and the committee would conduct
35:34
Speaker 3: the impeachment trial. Now that the trial would be public.
35:37
Speaker 3: The House managers would present their evidence, and the committee
35:39
Speaker 3: would conduct the trial. That is the way that the
35:43
Speaker 3: Senate is handled, for example, the judicial impeachments that come over.
35:46
Speaker 3: They've appointed a committee, the committee has heard the trial,
35:49
Speaker 3: and then the committee makes a recommendation to the Senate
35:52
Speaker 3: and the Senate Ultimately every Senator has to vote guilty
35:55
Speaker 3: or not guilty. But the trial itself is not held
35:57
Speaker 3: on the Senate floor. It's held in a committe. Now,
36:00
Speaker 3: I filed an organizing resolution that would set up exactly
36:05
Speaker 3: that process, would set up a committee to conduct the trial.
36:09
Speaker 3: The trial would be public, so we would put the information,
36:11
Speaker 3: we'd put the charges, we'd put the evidence, we'd put
36:14
Speaker 3: the harms, we'd put the people hurt and killed by
36:17
Speaker 3: the Democrats' open borders. We put all of those facts
36:20
Speaker 3: before the American people. But it would not be on
36:22
Speaker 3: the floor, it would be in a committee. I'm going
36:27
Speaker 3: to make a motion to do that. The Democrats are
36:29
Speaker 3: going to oppose it, I expect, and I think there
36:32
Speaker 3: are a number of Republicans who are going to raise
36:33
Speaker 3: points of orders, try to make motions to highlight the
36:37
Speaker 3: enormous harms caused by the open borders. And what I'm
36:41
Speaker 3: anticipating is every Democrat voting party line over and over
36:45
Speaker 3: and over again against every motion and every point of
36:48
Speaker 3: order we raise. Why And it's what Chuck Schumer told us,
36:51
Speaker 3: because this is a policy dispute, and the policy of
36:53
Speaker 3: the Democrats is they are for open borders, no matter
36:57
Speaker 3: how many people are killed, no matter how many children
37:00
Speaker 3: are violated, no matter how many women are sexually assaulted. Therefore,
37:04
Speaker 3: open borders, no matter how many terrorists come into this country,
37:08
Speaker 3: and how much death and destruction results. And I think
37:11
Speaker 3: next week we're going to see that vividly before the
37:14
Speaker 3: American people.
37:15
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center,
37:19
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
37:21
Speaker 1: with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts
37:23
Speaker 1: every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each
37:25
Speaker 1: day when you listen to Verdict afterwards, I'd love to
37:28
Speaker 1: have you as a listener to again Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
37:31
Speaker 1: and we will see you back here on Monday morning.